“Don’t worry,” Baba murmured in his ear, startling him. “Gregori is very neat; he always cleans up after himself.” She kicked one of the creatures hard with one heavy boot as she walked past. “Basilisks. I hate those things.”
They walked in companionable silence back to where they had left his cruiser and her motorcycle a few blocks away, tucked behind a tiny neighborhood convenience store. As usual, Liam had very little idea what Baba was thinking, and his own thoughts skittered like water bugs on a murky pond, from the possibilities they’d opened up with their illicit explorations to more personal possibilities he didn’t dare explore in any depth, lest they root themselves any further in the unfertile soil of his damaged soul.
“I’m going to go home and download these pictures onto my computer,” Liam said as they stood next to the BMW. “I want to see if I can compile a list of all the people in the green-coded files. It might tell us something we don’t know yet.”
Baba cocked her head to the side as she thought, errant strands of hair escaping from the braid she’d tucked it into for their after-hours foray. “You know, if all the missing kids are from names in that group, maybe we can figure out which families have children that are still at risk. If you eliminate the people without kids, or with kids who are too old, you’ll have a short list of which children might be Maya’s next target. There can’t be that many of them.”
Liam’s heart beat faster. “If the list is short enough, maybe we can prevent her from taking any more children.” A fraction of the two-ton weight he’d been carrying around on his shoulders seemed to lighten and drift off into the dark night.
A wicked smile flitted across Baba’s austere face, making her seem for a moment like some wild and dangerous beast out of legend. “Better yet,” she said, looking into Liam’s eyes, “if we can catch her in the act trying to steal another child, you get to keep your job. I can make her tell me where the doorway is, so I can tell the queen and get to keep my head. And the queen can make Maya give the missing children back. All we have to do is narrow down the list enough to figure out who her next target is, and we solve all our problems at once. And protect the child, at the same time.”
Liam gazed at her in the moonlight. “You’re a genius,” he said. And seized by an uncontrollable impulse, he put his hands on the side of her face, leaned in, and kissed her soundly. Pulled back, looked at the stunned expression on her face, and did it again. Her lips tasted like blackberry wine, felt soft like rose petals as they gave under his, and the elusive scent of orange blossoms floated through the air like nature made manifest.
Stepping back, he grinned at her, ridiculously pleased by the mixture of shock and pleasure he could see in her wide amber eyes. He was a little shocked himself by the strength of the longing that surged through his body, and had to fight the impulse to put her up against the closest wall and claim those lips and everything that came with them.
“Try to get some sleep,” he said in a rough voice over his shoulder as he walked to his car. “I’ll come over tomorrow when I can get away from work, and we’ll see if we can come up with some kind of a plan, depending on what information I’ve been able to gather from the pictures.”
In his rearview mirror, he could see Baba standing where he left her, one slim hand touching her mouth as if to hold on to the sensation he’d left there.
EIGHTEEN
THE MEMORY OF the look on Baba’s face kept Liam going through the long day that followed. Like the previous days, he waded through stacks of ever-accumulating paperwork whenever he got back into the office, instead of being out chasing after elusive, impossible crimes. But unlike the days before it, this one was occasionally broken up by flashes of memory like lightning that jolted briefly through the mundane annoyances: the feel of Baba’s skin beneath his hands, softer than silk; her quick intake of breath when he’d kissed her the first time, the slightest hint of a response from her rose-petal lips when he’d kissed her again. Those magical eyes, which seemed to cast a spell on him even when they were nowhere near.
Nina gave him a funny look when she’d brought his lunch in, asking if he was coming down with something. He’d smiled and said no. But maybe he was. That would explain the strange fever in his blood. Of course, as always, he’d simply blamed it on stress and not enough sleep. That made more sense than anything else he could put into words.